From Doctorow on writing

wish it were a Model-T

This quotation from E. L. Doctorow came to me by good luck just as we are coming to the end of his novel Ragtime and students are getting ready to write papers about the book with attention to social factors such as race, ethnicity, class, etc.   Perhaps Doctorow can encourage that project indirectly by this observation about the process of writing.

  “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”   —E.L. Doctorow